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Heroic save |
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Written by editor
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Sunday, 26 April 2009 |
Dylan Purcell
LETHBRIDGE HERALD
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For two days, all John Chapman could remember was Holly’s blue face as he pulled her out of the freezing water.
Then, he got a chance to see the two-month-old’s face as she lay in her crib, healthy and whole. When he peered over at her, she smiled.
“Now, that’s what I see when I think of that day,” said Chapman. “I couldn’t believe it. She smiled right at me.”
The Lethbridge resident and Philadelphia Flyers scout who is also famous for his tenure as the head coach of the Lethbridge Broncos from 1980-86, pulled young Holly and her mother from the freezing cold water of a retention pond in Calgary’s McKenzie Towne neighbourhood last Monday.
It cemented his local status as a hero, this time for something far more important than that 1983 Western Hockey League championship.
Chapman — “Chappy” to most of Lethbridge’s hockey cognoscenti — was in Calgary to attend Game 3 of the Calgary Flames’ Western Conference quarter-final series against the Chicago Blackhawks. When he’s in the city, he stays with his daughter who lives in the southeast neighbourhood. As always, Chapman takes his Labrador, Bailey, with him. He was walking Bailey when Carolyn approached pushing Holly in a stroller while three-year-old son, Ben, walked alongside.
“I didn’t have Bailey on a leash and he’s pretty good with kids but I didn’t want to scare the little boy,” said Chapman. “So I sent him away while they went past but the mother said the kids loved dogs and I told her he loved kids, too. He’s great with kids.
“He came over and the boy was petting him. The mother set the brakes in the stroller and she let go for a second to pet him and the wind just took that thing and blew it around. She had just taken her hand off it and the wind just turned it around.”
Chapman said the stroller rolled down the steep slope toward the pond and when it hit the retaining wall of large rocks.
“It flew up in the air and spun around like you wouldn’t believe” before landing in the cold pond below.
That’s when Chapman, whose 60th birthday is in the rear-view mirror, started climbing down the rocks to pull the stroller out.
“The way I see it, there were two heroes that day. One was that mom, because when I was halfway down the rocks, she jumped right over me into that pond. There was nothing going to stop her from getting that baby out. She didn’t even think about it; she just wanted to save her daughter.”
And the other hero?
“While we were down there, that little boy was up there and Bailey stayed right with him. Didn’t leave his side. You can imagine how scared that little guy was but Bailey stayed watching him the whole time. That’s a good dog.”
Chapman made the news in March when the Lethbridge Hurricanes inducted him into their hall of fame. He gave all the credit from that achievement to his co-workers. Scouts, assistants, players and the community were the ones Chappy felt deserved the credit during the team’s heyday. It’s no surprise he downplayed his role in Monday’s heroics.
“There’s no ‘hero’ to it. It was a natural reaction,” said Chapman of the courage which caused him to crawl down the steep embankment and pull the stroller, its precious cargo and the floundering mother from the water. “Anybody would have done it.”
Sure, but that it was Chapman who did it is no coincidence. Chapman the coach preached long and hard to his players about the values that make good people whether they lace up skates or shoes to go to work. At his Hurricanes/Broncos Hall of Fame induction, he said he was proud of the doctors, lawyers and carpenters he coached as well as the NHLers. His heart of gold was on full display to the capacity crowd at the Enmax Centre that night.
As he pulled Holly and her mother from that water, it shone through again.
“It kind of blew up after Al Maki from the Globe and Mail caught wind of it,” sighed Chapman. “I’d rather not be talking about it. I’ve been sort of lying in the weeds here since then.
“Like I said, anyone would have done it,” he added. “I mean, you see that stroller and you think about that little girl. I’m just happy they’re healthy.”
Once they were out of the water, Chapman grabbed some of Bailey’s blankets — Labradors shed, you know — and huddled them in his truck, heater blasting. The event was traumatic for the family and Chapman, who said all he could think about for the next 48 hours was the colour of Holly’s face as the stroller rose out the water, with her inside.
“I couldn’t stop thinking about that,” he said. “Just about how she looked and how cold that water must have been. She was down there for, it seemed like a long time. They said it couldn’t have been more than a minute but it sure felt like a long time.”
So, when Chapman returned to Calgary for Game 4, he visited the mother and daughter whose lives he saved. And in one brief smile, he found a better memory.
And two-month-old Holly found a way to thank her hero.
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